RSSAfter pirate lands in prison, software group hints at eBay lawsuit
By Jacqueline Emigh | Published July 25, 2008, 6:15 PM
After convicted software pirate Jeremiah Mondello pulled a 48-month federal prison stretch on Wednesday, an industry anti-piracy group announced six more lawsuits against individual piracy suspects -- also reportedly hinting that eBay could be the next one to get hauled into court.
"Mondello is a whiz-kid who used his smarts and savvy to rip off software makers and consumers. We are fortunate that he has been stopped, but there are hundreds more like him running illegal operations on eBay and other sites," according to Keith Kupferschmid, SVP of intellectal property policy and enforcement for the Software Industry Information Association (SIAA).
"The Mondello case demonstrates that these pirates won't simply get a slap on the wrist when caught. They very well may end up doing serious time in federal prison," Kupferschmid said in a statement.
The six new lawsuits announced this week bring the total number initiated by the SIIA to 32 in 2008 alone.
At BetaNews' press time this evening, an SIIA spokesperson was temporarily unvailable to confirm published reports that SIIA members are now talking about either suing eBay or seeking laws to make eBay and other Web sites take "proactive steps" around copyright infringement.
Although anti-counterfeiting lawsuits against eBay have shown mixed results, cases claiming copyright infringement by various parties against various defendents seem to have fared better, particularly around music copyrights.
While eBay lost a counterfeiting battle versus Louis Vuitton in France, a US court recently ruled against Tiffany in a similar case, finding that eBay had taken "reasonable action" to prevent counterfeit items from being sold on its site.
In venues outside of court, eBay has reportedly claimed that it is taking actions against software counterfeiting, too, such as placing volume restrictions on software sellers and curbing most short-term software auctions.
I was recently ripped off on ebay when I a purchased a program (Replay AV8). About a month into using the software I was informed by the software maker that my serial key was being fraudulently used and my software was deactivated. Even though I complained to Ebay about the seller, they did not stop the seller from continuously doing the same thing over and over again to other buyers. Also, the paypal buyer protection did not cover me because the purchase was "intangible".
Bottom line: Ebay and Paypal suck, it took them over a month to address my dispute (which gave the seller more and more time to commit fraud against others) and when they finally did unfavorably rule against me, they didn't even explain to me the how or why behind their decision. I had to contact them directly to get the reason and even though I had an email from the software maker stating that it was Fraud, they still ruled against me. Also, Ebay/Paypal make it very difficult to contact them about ANY Issue, even fraud.
Ebay and Paypal doesn't give S#%T about buyers, sellers or anyone else as long as they collect!
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|It sounds like that crooked pirate sold your seial number to several people. The software company has no idea which one was the original buyer. Don't buy this stuff from an EBAY seller...
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|What a load of bulls***, get ready for seller fees to skyrocket as ebay pays off lawsuits. There is no true justice in this world. How can ebay be held liable for what millions of people bootleg on their site?
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|There is no true justice in this world.
Kidding, right? The justice will be the millions of eBay users heading to greener pastures.
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|In the real world, you don't prosecute the owner of a market if fake or stolen goods are sold on a tenant's stall, you go after the person committing the crime.
eBay is a market, unless it knowingly allows criminals to operate, it can only harm all the legal sellers for it to be prosecuted.
But, equally, lawyers never do themselves out of a job in the US do they?
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|Of course, after all America has around 5% of the world's population and around 30% of its total lawyers.
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|Exactly. Filing a lawsuit against eBay is like prosecuting a shopping mall because its administration does not know one of its stores is selling illegal goods. Unless they are being intentionally lenient, which is not the case obviously, it is not eBay's responsibility to check whether goods being sold are legit or not. They are just the means for your communication with the sellers.
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|Q - What do you call 100 lawyers at the bottom of the sea?
A - A good start.
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|Wanna bust EBAY? Why not prosecute them for that constant deluge of pirated Grateful Dead concerts (in 3 CD packages) which thieves are selling for abuot $100.00 USD each. That is about 4 times the retail price if you could get the same item in a music store. Since most of these pirated concert recordings were never released only an IDIOT can't see what this bunch of thieves are doing...
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|So lame that people do this when they are likely getting the Grateful Dead concerts from archive.org.
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|Well, they used to; but you can't download the good quality stuff any more. It comes from other sites now...
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|Oh give me a break. The DMCA protects eBay from this kind of nonsense. They may not like how they have to go after each pirate themselves, but that doesn't mean eBay has to do their police work for them. THEY DO NOT.
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|just like the DMCA protected Napster, right?
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|Wow.
FYI: Napster got theirs *long* before the DMCA was spawned.
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|Huh? I think you have your facts confused.
DMCA became law in 1998, Napster started in 1999 and died in 2001. The DMCA was used by the record companies to sue Napster...
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|Good, they're going after the real pirates, who do it for profit, that do the actual harm to business.
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|Amen to that - there's no question those guys are bootleggers and deserve to do time. I'm still not sure about the kid that downloads MP3s that are just floating around on the internet, though. That's kinda like finding a CD-R copy of an album laying on a park bench or overhearing something playing on a guy's boom box.
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